Gallipoli

BOOK REVIEW: THE FALL OF THE OTTOMANS: THE GREAT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST By Eugene Rogan Basic Books, 485 pages Review by J.C. Tejeda Jr. Anyone desiring to understand the forces shaping the Middle East would find Eugene Rogan’s book, The Fall of the Ottomans, a good starting point. Although the book is about the final years of the Ottoman Empire, it does help the reader gain a special insight into the events that led to the current situation one see today. Rogan’s book is an easy to follow time line of events that reaches from the founding of the Young Turks Movement to the First World … More after the Jump…

The Allied invasion of Gallipoli and its subsequent failure represented perhaps the greatest lost opportunity of the First World War. There is every reason to expect that if the invasion of Turkey had been successful then much the same results would have accrued to the Allies then as were to accrue twenty-eight years later when the Allies successfully invaded Italy in the Second World War. The tangible results of the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 was the capitulation of the government of Mussolini, and the diversion of up to sixteen German divisions in Italy that could have been more profitably used in France. Additionally, one of Germany’s most capable … More after the Jump…